In attempting to do so I was presented with three choices so I could not proceed without wiping out the files with same names. When I was making the discs the PC named them like 001,002 etc. So when I was copying different discs to flash it was obvious I either had to make a selection of the three choices the PC gave me which I have forgotten now like replace a file with one in desalination or do not copy etc. or rename all the files. I have 100's.
I am doing this b/c optical discs are on the way out. I was thinking though that a flash drive could go bad and all videos would be lost.
i'd just copy the cd/dvd's as iso files onto the flash drive that way when you play the iso they will work exactly the same as if you were playing the media from the cd/dvd.
you can name the iso's anything you like when you're making them.
more to the point though is why are you copying them to flash drive from the cd/dvd's in the first place?
you created the cd/dvd's so assume you have the original files/videos on your hard drive somewhere so why not just simply copy those to the flash drive? it would be much quicker than doing it cd/dvd by cd/dvd where you need to keep on swapping the cd/dvd in the optical drive.
My opinion… optical drives may be on their way out… but it will be several years before they are gone. It's not something I'm going to worry about in the near future… but then again, I still have some floppy drives and disks (both 5 1/4 and 3 1/2. Just in case). Then again I have two 386 computers still, but I haven't turned them on in several years either.
I have about 25 DVDs of family videos, grand children etc. There must be hundreds of files. Through the years I never had the presence of mind to name each so there are many 001's, 0007's etc. from different discs. When the PC detects the likeness that is where the trouble is; I cannot tell it to disregard.
They are not on hard drive.
I copy them as you say by drag and drop or copy and paste from the DVD to the flash drive while both are open on desktop.
It worked for about 50 files till I switched DVDs.
I am doing so b/c I thought the next generation would appreciate it with their machine without the optical bay.
Perhaps, if I did it, I could make a folder for each DVD, that way there would be no trouble.
I sense this is a futile endeavor so likely will leave the DVDs for someone to attend to their way.
What do you think abut the folder idea?
Thanks guys as I think you have saved me a very time consuming project.
I am sure they can always pay to have them transferred to whatever is in vogue, if they have trouble and when they are ready.
P.S. Hypothetically, I wonder if a DVD player could be used if there was no available PC with DVD bay? It would be read only so my guess is, not.
Another opinion… you should get someone to organize all of those pictures into catagories and descriptions. Odd's are there is someone in your family that likes to do that sort of thing.
As far as putting them on flash drives… if you put them on as an iso of the disk instead of copying each individual file as Terry suggested, you wouldn't have to mess with the naming problems and it wouldn't really take all that long. You would have 25 iso's instead of 25 disks.
When I see an ISO file, I download it then just burn it to disk, correct? I will look up burning and ISO file but I thought it was like burning any file.
I am not understanding the procedure you are referring to but will gladly do it if it is easier.
AS it stand there are a lot of DVDs which have the extensions the PC gave them and the names are not important. So would ISOs or folders be easier?
yes putting each dvd in a separate folder will stop the popup about same file name, just selecting all and drag dropping them across to copy them as your doing will take about the same time as creating an iso image of each dvd, so up to you how you want to copy them.
i put my family photo/video files in a folder named with the date they were taken, and not worry about renaming the actual files inside which has you know are just numbered, so each folder has files which are different but are named the same.
to create an iso of the dvd you might need some new software, don't know what burning software you use but in my experience they usually have an option to burn to iso file (or something similar.) instead of burn to dvd when copying a cd/dvd.
What confused me was if /how an ISO file made it easier or faster. I guess what I was doing is OK as long as I use folders.
If using an ISO file is easier, how do you do that? Do I take a DVD disc and make that an ISO file first? I am unsure of what I aam doing with an ISO file - I do not get the overall picture.
As normal, I probably confused things… but by easier, I was thinking less steps.. but depending on how you do it, I guess there really isn't. In my head, I was thinking that you were dragging and dropping individual files… that would be 100 drag and drops for 100 files. But if you select all and drag and drop all of them… then that is only one action for the whole disk. And, again, as Terry said you can make a folder for each disk and copy the whole disk to that folder - and same name conflicts won't be a problem.
I get caught up in how I might do something and why… and that might not be at all what you are trying to accomplish.
Here was my thought. I was thinking that if I was going to the trouble to make copies of picture files for family, I might want to give the copies to more than one person. What I'd do is make an .iso of each of the disks and save to my computer. Then I would have 25 .iso files. I don't know how big your DVD's are, but let's say they are 5Gb each. That would be a total of 125 Gb. I would then copy the iso files to how ever many 128Gb thumb drives that I wanted to give away.
But now thinking more about it… it would be just as easy, if not easier, to just select all on the DVD and put in it's own folder on the thumb drive… which is what I'm thinking you were wanting to do before I confused things. This would give you a thumb drive full of files that you could easily manipulate into an organized folder system if you chose to do that in the future.
I know I can view the files on my flash drive but I have formatted it. I will undertake this at a later date. After much thought and reading it seems that a person could use imgburn to create an ISO from the files or folder. It seems the ISO is similar to the zip in that it holds all the files. Then use Rufus to create a bootable flash drive. Just for now, I will stick with the easy way, but, I cannot thank you both for your valuable input and patience. I learned a lot today.
you won't need to use rufus for anything peter. rufus is only needed to boot a flash drive when installing and running a computer os on a pc. you do not need a flash drive to be bootable except for that single use and certainly won't be needed to store/play/use any other type of iso image stored on a flash drive.
an iso image is just a container for files that are on/used with optical media like cd's, dvd's, and blurays.
when a pc see's an iso image file (name of file.iso) stored on a hard drive or flash drive it treats it exactly as if it's an optical disk in the dvd drive.
which means you can open it and browse it's contents or automatically play it if it's playable, like a dvd film or music cd.
the main reason to create/store things in an iso image is if you want an exact uncompressed copy of the data that can be burned again to another optical disk at a later date if required.
